New combination has 11.5 CR, better flowing heads, and new 108 LSA cam with same effective seat duration, .020 & .050 specs, but more lift to suit flow of new heads better.

Degreed new cam in at 106 ICL, 2 degrees less advanced than old combination. Rule of thumb is typically to go with 4 degrees advance, but I'm looking at the CR increase as offsetting any torque loss from less 2 degrees less advance and helping the engine at higher RPM.

Does this make sense to anyone else? And am I getting a bit OCD about 2 freaking degrees on the ICL?

It's been said many times , by many top tuners that in dyno or better yet track testing you need to make these Cam advance or retard changes in no more then 2 degree steps when you get get down to the fine tooth comb phase!

As long as the camshaft has enough duration to keep up with the heads, cubes, induction, exhaust....... Then it's the combination of those components that will determine where the peaks occur.
Sure, you can broaden the curve some by playing with the cam, but the intake manifold, heads, headers are going to "tune" to a certain rpm depending on the size of the motor they're bolted to.
I can't think of any time I've moved the cam and "traded" power at one end of the power curve, and moved it to the other end.

My experience has been that there will be a sweet spot where the cam just works best.

Most of the time I've seen someone retard a cam on the dyno(from a normal installed position to another normal installed position), it usually plays out where you lost on the bottom end, and it never caught back up again.

This is the situation I see many times when changing cams or moving cams....... Start low(power wise), end low.

The types of builds where I can see the trend I was referring to not playing out the way I described would be like a Super Stock or Comp type build, where they seem to have power curves that, in my mind at least, seem to "defy the odds".

Only way to find the optimum cam adv/ret is to experiment. I think it was Crane cams that advised making a minimum 4* change, & then fine tuning from there. Also what needs to be borne in mind is: what is more important, low speed tq or higher rpm hp because adv/ret cams typically shifts the power curve slightly.